The Dedicated : Initial Days

Margaret was going through a difficult process which each Sadhak has to go through. The higher the aim, the more the hurdles. But it all depends, how one takes it. Margaret faced everything, took every opportunity to know in depth the Truth, transformed every obstacle into opportunity. In her own words in the talk she gave later at the Hindu Ladies’ Social Club in Bombay in 1902, she said :
I was born and bred an Englishwoman and up to the age of 18 I was trained and educated as English girls are. Christian religious doctrines were of course early instilled into me. Even from my girlhood I was inclined to venerate all religious teachings and I devotedly worshipped the child Jesus, loved Him with my whole heart for the self-sacrifices He always willingly underwent, and felt I could not worship Him enough for His crucifying Himself to bestow salvation on the human race. But after the age of 18 I began to harbour doubts as to the truth of the Christian doctrines. Many of them began to seem to me false and incompatible with Truth. These doubts grew stronger and stronger and at the same time my faith in Christianity tottered more and more. For seven years I was in this wavering state of mind, very unhappy and yet very, very eager to seek the Truth. I shunned going to church and yet sometimes my longing to bring restfulness to my spirit impelled me to rush into church and be absorbed in the service in order to feel at peace within, as I had hitherto done, and as others round me were doing. But alas! No peace, no rest was there for my troubled soul all eager to know the Truth.

During the seven years of wavering it occurred to me that in the study of natural science I should surely find the Truth I was seeking. So I began ardently to study how this world was created and all things in it and I discovered that in the laws of Nature at least there was consistency, but it made the doctrines of the Christian religion seem all the more inconsistent. Just then I happened to get a life of Buddha and in it I found that here also was a child who lived ever so many centuries before the child Christ, but whose sacrifices were no less self-abnegating than those of the other. This dear child Gautama took a strong hold on me and for the next three years I plunged into the study of the religion of Buddha, and became more and more convinced that the salvation he preached was decidedly more consistent with the Truth than the preachings of the Christian religion.

Margaret with all these experiences could not live without religion. That was a heritage which she had received. How did that come to fulfillment? How did she come in contact with Swami Vivekananda to whom she was to dedicate herself?

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